The very best possible bills now under consideration in Congress are largely bailouts for health insurance companies at public expense. The “public option,” which was originally sold to us as a path toward a single-payer solution or Medicare for all, has been reduced to — at best — a token mitigating factor in a catastrophically bad law.

Sometimes reform has to occur in a big way, everything or nothing, if it’s to happen at all. That’s the way it is with health care reform at this stage. Every moving piece is related to every other one. That’s also why a public option is necessary.

Frequently of late it seems that CNN provides an inordinate amount of time for the Republican Congressional Leadership to vilify The President’s attempts to care for the poor, the helpless and the infirm. As I watch these folks babbling away, I am reminded of a comment that Mark Twain wrote in the New York Tribune, […]

I wouldn’t wish the current Democratic Congressional leadership group on any incoming President, especially not one with a mandate for change like Barack Obama. In the Jib-Jab year end film, 2008 is expelled from the room badly beaten up by crisis after crisis. Hope and change may be coming but without real Democratic Congressional leadership […]

At a news conference held a short time ago, a bi-partisan claque of Congressional leaders stood before cameras to declare, finally and with great relief, “We have a Pope bailout!” Let the puff of white smoke rise from the Capitol’s chimney. Except none of them said exactly what is in the deal. How much money […]

by Jack A. Smith — During the month of June the Democratic-controlled Congress in the U.S. voted to fund the Iraq war deep into next year, to support a compromise version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that endangers civil liberties, and, in effect, eliminated the possibility of impeaching President George W. Bush.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.